I'd like to see an x-ray of her "new" pinky. How far below the tip is the bone. Since she maintained the proximal nailbed I'm not surprised she regained her nail. And yes you can get scarring and healing over the tip.

But if there is little padding over the distal end of the bone then she'll likely have continued symptoms and....

likely need more surgery in the future.

Pogo, as for your question "who decides" we both know the "real"question is "who pays". Who has the right/obligation to say "no"?

(Well, no, but I would have *wanted* to, and I wouldn't have so much as pretended sympathy. And if she wouldn't leave me alone I'd go rent the movie Red Sonja and learn all the lines of the evil bitch queen as she rips her half-mask off to reveal... the SCAR!!! "I keeeled your parentssss, but loook what you deeed to MEEEEE!")

Also, while reading the article and looking at the pictures my thoughts were the same as c3. The nail base was there. Of course her nail grew back. Dur.

Synova, why would you have slapped her? She want to the hospital, got an opinion, asked for a second opinion, didn't like the options the doctor offered, and left the hospital. She didn't pester the doctors, and I didn't see references to any drama.

If she doesn't think a doctor is giving her the most appropriate treatment surely she has every right to leave and seek another doctor she likes better? That doesn't seem slap-worthy to me.

OMG... "I'm able to do everything I could do before. I wash dishes. I cook," she says,..."

She didn't even lose her finger to the first knuckle. SHE WAS NOT DISABLED. Darn good thing that she wasn't reduced to being a burden on her family for the rest of her life having lost the tip of her pinky finger.

She didn't even lose her finger to the first knuckle. SHE WAS NOT DISFIGURED. My son has worse disfigurement as stretch marks on his back from growing too fast.

My cousin got his thumb pulled off by a silage chopper... His thumb! My other cousin was born with only a pinky and a thumb on each hand.

I can sympathize with the pain, the tingling and itch... with the pinky-tip loss? Are you kidding me?

Having lost a similar amount off my pinky to a power saw - though with no bone damage - I had similar healing with no debridement or matri stem. Debridement might have helped reduce the scarring, though.

I'm not a doctor, but c3 seems right to be concerned about the bone end. It really just sounds like she opted to let the finger tip heal over on its own with a little help to reduce scarring.

This whole thing reminds me of not one, but two (unrelated) Seinfeld episodes. The one where Elaine is tarred as a bad patient (remember the call she gets in the middle of the night from the AMA?) and Toby's severed pinky toe. Thanks, I needed the laugh!

OK, that makes sense; it's not as though she wouldn't have been able to wash dishes or cook any more if she'd lost the whole finger, let alone the tip. (Although in fairness this quote has been filtered through a reporter so we don't know its context, what the reporter asked her, whether she actually said it right after the part about its being shorter, etc. This could have been her response to a reporter's question about "Can you do everything you did before?" fifteen minutes after she said the rest of the quote.)

Also I think a *little* drama-queeniness is excusable when one sees a chunk of one's body lying on the floor. Even a small chunk. It does seem like a shocking experience.